And I Was Lost
by Kirsten Erin
Summary: I didn't sit down to write this because I wanted to bitch about John Winchester or analyze why he did what he did when he raised them. No, I'm here to tell you about how Dean, Sam, Charlie, and I discovered that there was more to Mary Winchester's death than we had been been told and how we set about finding the man who killed her. / High School AU. Dean/Castiel. Charlie/Jo.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note: I haven't been on FanFiction in a few months, since I finished my Newsies trilogy that took me about two years to write. Honestly, I didn't really intend to come back anytime soon. I've been busy trying to write a book I can hopefully get published. However, I was scrolling through Pinterest the other day and came across some High School Destiel **_**_fanart. Sometimes you just can't help writing a story and that's exactly what happened with this one. One minute I was thinking how fun it would be to write a story like this and a few hours later, I hit 7,000 words on it. So I figured, what the hell, I had wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo anyway._**

**_So here's my AU High School Destiel story. (The first chapter is pretty short. The rest hopefully be a little longer.) I hope you enjoy it. I sure am enjoying getting to write it._**

**And I Was Lost**

**A Castiel/Dean Winchester High School Story**

**by Kirsten Erin**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

The Winchesters were a famous bunch when I was at Lawrence High School. They weren't high school royalty or anything like that; in fact, they were pretty much the opposite. They were more infamous than famous, I guess. They were attractive enough to be popular, but too strange. Dean was too hotheaded and got in too many fights to be on anyone's good side, Charlie was a lesbian and so geeky that you could feel your IQ heightening just by being in her vicinity, and Sam was just, well, Sam. They were my friends, so I guess I could be a little more flattering than that, but that's just the way most people saw them.

Beyond that, there was all the rumors that wrapped the Winchesters up like morose giftwrap. Mary Winchester had been murdered when they were kids and no one had ever been caught for it. Some people thought their dad had done it. I can see why they might think that. The Winchester siblings had all shown up to school at least once with bruises that they couldn't account for. Even Charlie came in with a black eye once, which set the rumor mill churning for days. Some people thought Dean had given that one to her, though that was the stupidest of all their theories. Everyone knew that to even look at Charlie or Sam wrong meant earning Dean's particular ire. No, John Winchester was the one to give her that bruise, but that's part of my story, so we'll come to that later. He may have given Charlie that bruise, but John Winchester didn't kill his wife. I know that because this story is all about how we found Mary's murderer.

I guess I should explain who I am before I ramble any longer. My name is Castiel Novak. Yeah, it's a pretty ridiculous name, but it is what it is. My mother claims it was my Dad's idea. Most people just call me Cas. I have one older brother, Michael, and we live with my mother since my father ran off when I was a kid. I've never even met him, not that I really care to. Mom's a workaholic, though, so it kinda feels like Michael runs my life most of the time, or he tries to anyway. We aren't particularly close, especially since he doesn't like the Winchesters and the Winchesters are pretty much my best friends. You can imagine that causes some issues.

We live next door to my cousins, which can be cool some of the time, but is mostly just exhausting. Out of the three of them, Loki is the only one I can stand to be around. Luke's too, well, scary and Anna's too self-righteous. Loki can be pretty cool when he isn't trying to out-funny everyone else. When he's just being normal, he's a pretty okay guy.

I started hanging out with the Winchesters during freshman year. Technically, Dean's the only one in my grade, but he's always been really close with his siblings, so hanging out with him usually means hanging out with them. Giving someone your slice of pie is probably a weird way to start a friendship, but to Dean, that's like throwing yourself in front of a bus to push him out of the way, so we were pretty fast friends after that. I was really thankful for it too, because it was the first week of freshman year and I was having trouble making friends up to that point, so it was nice to have someone like Dean take a liking to me. I mean, we fight every once in a while, but I could intentionally wreck his beloved Impala and I have no doubt that Dean would still have my back if I needed him. That's what a real friendship looks like.

Anyway, now we're in our junior year. In fact, we're about a week in. Charlie and Sam are in the grade below us and it's nice to have them around most of the time. Barring the time that Charlie and Sam started yelling at each other in the hallway about something last year and made the most awkward scene ever. Dean and I had to jump in and break it up before one of them tackled the other. I wish I could remember what that fight was about now. Still, they're good kids and get along well enough most of the time. I really did enjoy having them around at school.

I think the only real downside to them being at Lawrence High is the fact that the amount of fistfights Dean and I had been in increased exponentially when the two of them showed up. Like I said before, even looking at Charlie or Sam wrong will make you hurt pretty soon if Dean finds out about it. Sam took a lot of shit freshman year for being smaller. He started to hit his growth spurt now, so I figure that'll end soon. Charlie got shit for being a lesbian and that had been out in the open since she was in middle school, so I was pretty certain that cause for fighting wouldn't be going away. I always hoped people would become more tolerant, but I wasn't about to hold my breath for it. After all, we're talking about the town that threw a fit when Mrs. Harvelle got married and kept her own last name.

I wasn't the kind of guy who usually got in to fights, but Dean Winchester definitely was. And friendship means having each other's back, especially in a fight.

Thankfully, protecting each other seemed to be the one thing John Winchester didn't mind the siblings doing. In fact, he seemed to encourage it, from what I could tell. He may be one son of a bitch, but I think there is some part of him that really does love his kids. I always wondered if some part of him knew the way he treated them was wrong and maybe he taught them to defend each other to keep him from going to far, hurting one of them too much.

I didn't sit down to write this because I wanted to bitch about John Winchester or analyze why he did what he did when he raised them. No, I'm here to tell you about how Dean, Sam, Charlie, and I discovered that there was more to Mary Winchester's death than we had been been told and how we set about finding the man who killed her.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Author's Note: I would just like to point out that every character I use in this story will be from the show, unless otherwise specified. I just want to be clear that none of these are my OCs, they'll all be characters, even obscure ones, from Supernatural. If I do create an OC for some reason or another, I will be sure to make note of it. _**

**Chapter 2**

"Cas, did you finish that essay we were supposed to write for history?" Dean asked as I slid into the passenger seat of his Impala. Charlie and Sam were in the backseat, talking ninety miles a minute about some book they had both been reading. I wondered how Dean could even think with them chattering on like that.

I closed the door and buckled my seatbelt across me. "Yeah. I'm guessing you didn't?"

Dean groaned and laid his head on the steering wheel. "I was hoping someone else would forget too. Ellen's gonna kill me." Ellen Harvelle was the history teacher at the school. Her daughter, Jo, was a freshman this year and her husband, Bobby Singer, used to be good friends with the Winchesters' dad before he went all batshit and started working long hours at the precinct just to avoid being around his kids. Still, they acted like the Winchesters' aunt and uncle, which meant they got to give them a particularly hard time whenever they did something wrong.

It was Bobby who taught Dean how to drive and Ellen who drove Sam to the hospital when his appendix ruptured. It was Ellen who took Charlie to her first comic bookstore and Bobby who bought her her first computer. They've always been really nice to me, too. Though Ellen uses me as an example of a good student whenever she's lecturing Dean about being a bad one, so that's pretty embarrassing. They let us call them by their first names, except when we're in class. Then we have to call her Mrs. Harvelle.

"Maybe she'll give you a break on this one," I said as he put the car in gear and took off toward the school.

"Yeah, right after Sam gets detention for a fight I didn't start," he answered.

That's another thing I love about the Winchesters. You wouldn't know it from how well-mannered Charlie and Sam are most of the time (Well, Sam's well-mannered. Charlie has issues with authority, but the point here is that she doesn't start fights.), but if Dean's in a fight, both will jump in without a moment's hesitation. They're just as protective of Dean as he is of them, though I don't think he realizes it half the time. My brother's not protective of me at all and if he were in a fight, I would probably assume he deserved to get hit.

I shrugged then, because he was probably right. "You've got to start doing your homework."

"I can't focus. It's too boring."

"How about we go to the library after school and study for an hour or two? That ought to help you focus."

"Yes, let's go to the library!" Sam called, his attention honing in on the word _library_. "Please can we go to the library?"

"I don't remember inviting you," Dean said, smirking at his brother in his rearview mirror. "You're such a nerd."

"He's not the one who stayed up watching X Files last night," Charlie answered, kicking the back of his seat gently. She knew better than to use real force in Deans' baby.

"Hey, that's a good show."

"Not the point."

"Can we come too, Cas?" Sam asked, his voice imploring. "The newest Percy Jackson book just came out and Jo's gonna ruin it for me if I don't get it soon."

"I don't see why not," I answered, trying and failing to hold back a smile.

Dean frowned in his rearview mirror. "Hey, he's not the one driving. He doesn't get to make the rules, I do."

"He already said yes," Charlie shot back, a triumphant smile lighting up her freckled face. "You can't take it back now."

"Ugh, it's too early for this. Fine, we can all go to the library." He threw me a fake glare. "You'll pay for this, Novak."

"Oh, I'm sure I will."

Dean always tried to pretend he wasn't a nerd, but it's a well known fact amongst those who are close to him that he's almost as geeky as Charlie, only less on the technical side of things. Maybe the correct term is nerdy. He won't admit to being able to quote three-fourths of Lord of the Rings, but if you marathon it with him, he'll be right there mouthing the words in between bites of chocolate chip cookie dough.

This is, of course, why the two of us ended up having an argument during second period about what Hogwarts House I was in. We had mostly been having the argument through passed notes and whispers, but resumed it as soon as the bell rang and we were all packing up our stuff.

"I am not in Hufflepuff," I stated loudly. That, of course, got me several strange looks from the rest of the class, who hadn't expected me to loudly declare my House loyalties.

"Are too," Dean smirked, his green eyes twinkling simply because he knew he was irritating me. "Sure as I'm in Gryffindor."

"More like Slytherin," I mumbled, still loud enough for Dean to hear. I swung my backpack over my shoulder as he put a hand over his heart like I had mortally wounded him.

"I am not Slytherin," he responded, once we were out of the classroom door. "I am not a scum-sucking asswipe."

"Not all Slytherin's are bad," Charlie butted in before I could respond. She seemed to appear out of nowhere, her red hair bouncing around her face like she was more than pleased to be walking into the middle of a Harry Potter discussion, which was probably exactly how she was feeling. "Just because we never got to see a good Slytherin doesn't mean they all suck."

"What about Snape?" Jo asked. I hadn't even realized she was there until she spoke, but she and Charlie had been spending more and more time together lately, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Her hair was up in a ponytail and her left ear had at least two more piercings than I remembered it having the last time I saw her. She and Charlie always made an odd pair when they were together. Jo was just as hardcore punk as Charlie was nerdy, but they got along so well that you hardly noticed.

"You're joking, right? Tell me you're joking," Charlie turned on her friend like she had just told her she was thinking about getting a Dark Mark. "Snape is the farthest thing from a good guy. He's an asshat who picks on kids because he's still pissed about being bullied when he was a kid. Yeah, James sucked for picking on him, but Snape was a full grown man by the time Harry and the others came along. He could have acted like one."

Jo raised her hands in surrender. "Yikes. My bad. Carry on."

Charlie turned back toward Dean. "Anyway, you're definitely a Gryffindor."

Dean flashed me with a pleased smirk.

"And I'm a Ravenclaw," I answered. "_Not_ a Hufflepuff."

"While there's nothing wrong with Hufflepuffs, seeing as I'm one, I agree with Cas," Charlie answered. "You're definitely a Ravenclaw."

I shot Dean a smug look of my own and he rolled his eyes playfully. Everyone knew better than to argue with Charlie about her Harry Potter facts. If she said you were in a specific house, you were in that house, no questions asked.

"Yeah, I can see you rocking a blue and silver tie," Jo responded, only half paying attention now that she had her phone out. "It would go great with your eyes."

Charlie looked like she had been betrayed. "It's blue and _bronze_. God, Jo, how are we even friends?" The two wandered off, ribbing each other about Harry Potter facts until they disappeared into the crowded hallway.

Dean looked up at the clock. "Shit. We've got to get to History or Ellen'll kill us."

He was right, we were going to be late if we didn't get moving.

We slid into our seats a second before the bell rang and I didn't miss Ellen's amused look that she shot toward the both of us, like she was reminding us that she could whip us if she really wanted to. "Alright, everyone, homework on your desks."

Ellen turned around to rummage through her own desk, while I hastily wrote in _Dean Winchester _on the top of my essay before quickly passing it to him. In this class, he sat one row ahead of me. Ellen figured keeping us from sitting side by side would keep us from talking through class, though it didn't. Him sitting in front of me was just as bad.

"What's this?" he asked, turning as the paper bumped against his cheek.

"Just take it," I hissed while Ellen was still distracted. "You need the grade. Mine can take a bit of a dive."

Dean glanced toward Ellen. "Are you sure?"

"Oh my god, stop being difficult."

Dean spun back around and set the paper on his desk. I fished out my history book and notebook while Ellen went around collecting papers. She stopped when she got to me. "Cas, your homework?"

I sucked in air through my teeth, doing my best to look like I really had forgotten it. "Sorry, Mrs. Harvelle. I completely forgot."

Ellen gave me an irritated look and moved on to Dean's desk. She took one look at his paper and dropped her arms to her sides looking even more irritated. She pursed her lips together and Dean shrunk down in his seat as she turned a glare on the both of us.

"Cas, I know what your handwriting looks like. Or better yet, I know what Dean's looks like. His is barely legible." She added it to the stack of papers in her hand. Snickers went around the room like a wave, but I did my best to ignore it. "This'll be graded as Cas's paper and I'll see both of you in detention. Dean, you should be ashamed of yourself for cheating off your friend's hard work. And Cas, you shouldn't let him."

"He didn't-" I started but Ellen cut me off with a sharp look. Dean sunk down in his desk while Ellen continued around the room.

I waited until she was at the front of the class again before I leaned forward until my face was just behind his head. "Sorry, Dean."

"Dammit, Cas, now everyone thinks I'm using you to cheat," he whispered back without turning around. I spent the rest of the class unable to focus because I was worried that Dean was pissed at me. I had only been trying to help. Dean would never have asked me to do that for him, no matter how dire his grade situation was. He took responsibility for his own messes and now I felt bad for forcing that on him and getting us both in trouble. I should have known not to try to pull that on Ellen, of all people. Any other teacher probably wouldn't have caught on.

Ellen was rambling on about the old Civil War tales and all I could do was stare at the back of Deans head, trying to will him to give me a sign of just how pissed he was. I hated it when Dean got mad at me. I didn't dare pass him any notes. Ellen would murder us if we got two infractions from her on the same day.

So I waited until the bell rang and immediately grabbed Dean's shoulder to get his attention. I started talking even before he turned to look at me. "Dean, I'm so sorry. I'll go tell Ellen it was all me and maybe she'll let you off the hook. She knows you-"

"Woah, calm down, Cas," Dean said, his lips twisting up in that smirk that always made my chest tighten up and made my breath catch. "It's not a big deal. Besides, I'd just have to wait in the parking lot for you to get out. Might as well keep you company."

I felt my whole body relax. He wasn't upset. He threw an arm around me as we made our way into the hallway. "Can't let my guardian angel take the fall by himself just because he was trying to help out his best friend." He grinned at me. "Come on, we'd better find Charlie before lunch so I can give her the keys. Don't want them roasting in the Impala while they wait for us. It'd stink up my baby."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note: So I'm going to do my best to start posting once a week, preferably on Thursdays. The last few weeks have been a little crazy with my visiting my parents for Thanksgiving and work being crazy when I got back, but I'll do my best to be consistent. (And, as a side note, I'd like to point out that I was originally unaware that Lawrence, Kansas, is a pretty big city. In this story it's gonna be more like a medium-sized town where you know most of your neighbors, but not everyone.)**_

I had always hated detention. But then, I suppose that's the point.

I never got it nearly as much as Dean did, but like I said, the two of us ended up in a lot of fights. That meant we got detention often enough. We had to be silent and do nothing for a full hour. No homework. No talking. No sleeping. We just stared at the front and tried not to die of boredom. Dean and I tried to learn Morse code at Sam's suggestion sometime around the end of our Freshman year, but Principal Crowley said if we didn't stop clicking our 'bloody' pens and tapping our desks then he was going to murder us. He tried to say it in the 'cool teacher' way, pretty much the way he tries to be around all the students, but we could tell he was pretty serious about punishing us for it. It wouldn't have lasted long anyway. Even if Crowley hadn't cared about the tapping, we couldn't really make heads or tails of the others' messages.

Crowley is probably my least favorite teachers at the school, mostly because of the whole 'cool teacher' act he pulled. He was always trying to pretend he was just one of the guys and it made me want to snap my pencil in half. Dean thought it was hilarious and would try to play it up, even using some of Crowley's attempted slang words that were at least a decade of of date.

"You know how guys are, Mr. C," Dean would say when they were taken to the principal's office for fighting. "We're wicked emotional and just don't know how to show it. I know it's not groovy to throw fights, but sometimes you just can't help it."

And Crowley would smile, somehow not catching the smirk on Dean's face, or else assuming it was some sign of camaraderie. He would punish us, but not as harshly as other teachers did. He was too busy trying to be friends with all the students, but especially guys like Dean. I think he just had a thing for rebels. Or maybe just for Dean.

By the time we got out of detention that day, I was about ready to run screaming from the building, but at least we managed to get out of there before Crowley cornered us to ask about our plans after school. He was too busy answering some question a girl in the corner was asking. We hightailed it out of there.

Charlie and Sam were waiting for us in the Impala. Charlie sat in the passenger seat, her feet on the dash while she read a Wonder Woman comic book, while Sam lay spread out across the backseat, his headphones on and his eyes closed.

"Hey! Get your feet off my baby!" Dean yelled, sprinting over to the car.

"Don't throw a bitch fit," Charlie shot back, though I noticed she immediately dropped her feet. "I didn't scratch it or anything."

"Back," he ordered, sticking out a thumb. She frowned and crawled over the seat instead of getting out, just to piss Dean off. He opened his mouth to yell at her, but she moved quickly enough that she had already landed haphazardly on Sam before Dean could say anything. Sam shoved her off of him and she fell into the floor of the car.

"Ugh. That hurt, asshole," she accused.

"Serves you right for fucking with my baby," Dean growled as we slid into the car.

Sam rolled his eyes at her and moved so she could crawl into her seat.

"I don't see why Cas always gets front seat," Charlie whined as the car started moving. "It's not fair. I get carsick in the back."

"Cas is the guest," Dean answered.

I turned around to smirk at her and she kicked the back of my seat, not really mad at me but determined to make her point.

"He's practically family," she shot back. "He doesn't count as a guest anymore."

"Yeah? Then he gets it because I say he gets it. You wanna go to the library or not? 'Cause I can drop you off at the house on the way there."

Charlie huffed and fell silent. We all knew he wouldn't make good on the threat. Dean almost never let any of them stay at home by themselves unless their dad was uncharacteristically out of town. He didn't like taking the chance that he would come home early and Dean wouldn't be there to redirect his dad's rage. Still, it was a good enough threat to shut Charlie up.

When we made it to the library, Sam was out of the car before Dean had even turned it off. It took another minute or two for the rest of us to get out of the car.

"Dean, Cas, what do you guys think about Jo?" Charlie asked as we made our way through the double doors.

"What do you mean? She's Jo," Dean asked, shrugging.

Charlie rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm aware of that. I mean, what do you think about her. Like, do you think she's pretty?"

That got both mine and Dean's attention and both our heads swiveled in her direction.

"Why do you ask?" I said, grinning.

"Do you have a crush?" Dean prodded.

Charlie's face turned bright red. "No, I just . . . I don't know," she sputtered.

Dean was grinning ear to ear now. He clasped his hands together and put his head on my shoulder, dramatically making doe eyes at the younger girl. I tried not to let my breathing hitch at his proximity or act too tense. "Our little girl is all grown up! I can already hear wedding bells."

"Same sex marriage isn't legal in Kansas yet, Dean," I pointed out.

"_Yet_," he answered, straightening up and allowing my breath to go back to normal.

"I hate you," Charlie answered, doing her best to look angry, but she was smiling and her face was still as red as her hair. "I shouldn't have said anything."

I put an arm around her shoulder. "I swear on my life that neither of us will say a word," I said. She looked relieved. "But for the record, I think you two would be great together."

"You think she might like me back?" Charlie asked, hope in her voice.

Dean looked at her like she was crazy. "Pff, who wouldn't like you? You're Charlie Fucking Winchester."

Charlie smiled from ear to ear and the redness started to seep out of her face. "Yeah," she said haughtily. "You're right." She sauntered away before either of us could say anything more.

The two of us made our way to a nearby table where we could spread out our stuff, Dean shaking his head with amusement.

"How did I not think of that before?" he asked as we took our seats. "Jo Harvelle and Charlie Winchester. It's perfect."

"I wouldn't have thought of it either," I answered. "But I can definitely see it now."

"Can you imagine Bobby's reaction to that? He'd be so pissed because he couldn't clean his shotguns out to intimidate her! Charlie would just offer to help." He guffawed loudly and I had to shush him to get him to calm down before the librarian came around and kicked us out before we had even gotten started on our homework.

We settled into starting on our assignments, but it wasn't easy to keep Dean on track. It never is. Every time we were silent for more than ten minutes, he would come up with something else he had forgotten to tell me or some funny memory that he had just remembered and needed to remind me.

Sam came and joined us after half an hour, his nose deep in the latest Percy Jackson book.

"Don't you have homework too?" Dean asked, surly because I had told him I was going to go sit elsewhere if he didn't stop talking to me while I was trying to finish my math homework.

"Shh," was Sam's only response.

Dean pulled a face and went back to his history essay. Ellen had told him after class that she would give him a B if he turned it in before class the next day.

Charlie didn't return until a full hour had passed. Her face was pale and drawn as she sat down.

"What's wrong, Charlie?" I asked, snapping my book shut. I was immediately concerned. She usually only made faces like that after Dean dragged her into a Haunted House, which he did almost every Halloween. So unless someone had decorated the back of the library for Halloween super early, then she was probably freaked out about something serious.

Her eyebrows furrowed together and she looked at Sam and Dean with a mixture of concern and fear. "I think I jut found something out about Mary's murder," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like something no one's told us before."

That grabbed everyone's attention pretty quickly. Even Sam closed his book and sat forward in his chair, the front to feet landed on the floor with a heavy thud.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, voice wary. It shook a little even as he asked it.

"I mean, I was looking through the police database because I was bored- Yes, I know you told me to stop doing that, Cas, that's why I used the library computer instead of mine, so they can't track the IP address- and I saw the case file about Mary Winchester's murder. Your dad never talks about it except when he's in a mood, so I figured I would look through it. Now I wish I hadn't. I just figured they had already told us everything about the murder already."

"And?" Sam asked, eyes wide. "What did you find out?"

"They didn't."

I sucked in a breath. Everyone seemed to be holding theirs, like they were afraid one wrong move would unleash something terrible. Like, if we kept holding our breaths, whatever news that was terrifying Charlie would just disappear. Part of me wanted to tell her to stop keeping us in suspense, but I was scared to find out whatever it was that she had discovered. The other half of me wanted to tell her I didn't want to hear it at all.

Charlie looked over her shoulder, then moved in closer until her chair was right next to mine. Sam and Dean leaned in from the opposite side of the table. Charlie fidgeted with the ends of her hair. "I don't know how to explain it. Your dad and everyone else always told us that they just found her dead, right? We knew there were weird circumstances, but no one ever said much about what they were."

"And you found out what they were," I said. It wasn't a question, just a statement. It was pretty clear from the look on her face that whatever those circumstances were, they were every bit as weird as everyone had said.

"Apparently, when they found your mom there were all these weird ass symbols around her made with her blood. A pentacle and some other stuff."

"What's a pentacle?" Sam asked, looking ill. I didn't blame him. I felt ill too. I think we all did.

"It's a five-point star with a circle around it. It's mostly associated with witchcraft, but it's pretty much been a prominent symbol in, like, every religion for centuries."

"How do you know that?" Dean asked.

She waved a hand in dismissal. "I looked it up when I saw it in the report. It was the only symbol that had a name, though the article did say there were others. Look, that's not the only thing though. There's something else."

"What is it?"

Charlie took a deep breath. "You know how your Dad found out something was happening because she called him when she realized someone was in the house?" Dean winced, but nodded. John had taken the boys to the park that day. They went there having two parents and were motherless by the time they got home. Everyone knew that part. It's why everyone knew John Winchester hadn't actually been the one to murder her. He got the call and went running for the car, leaving the kids with Ellen, who had been there with Jo at the same time.

"Well, they have some of the conversation transcribed, from your dad's account. He said he answered the phone only to hear her talking to her attacker. They figured she had dialed him without the attacker knowing that she had done it. John didn't hear the other voice, but he heard Mary talking to him. He didn't hear much, but he did hear her say. 'You know me. We grew up together, we've lived in this same town since we were in diapers. Don't do this.'"

Charlie let that hang in the air for a moment while we all took it in.

Dean was the first to speak. He leaned back in his chair, his face as pale as Charlie's, which made his freckles stand out all the more. "So she knew her killer and whoever it is, they're someone from Lawrence."

I swallowed. "Which means they're probably still here."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

When I got home around seven, Michael was already there. He was sitting in front of the TV, still in his slacks and button down shirt from his job at the church. I should tell you that my family is weirdly religious. Not the kind of religious that makes you a better person or makes you want to love people better. They're religious in the self-righteous, my-religion-gives-me-the-right-to-treat-you-like-shit kind of way. It's a fairly recent development. Mom and Aunt Naomi started dragging everyone to church about four years ago. She made me go for a while, but I hated it. She stopped making me go about the middle of Freshman year and Loki got out of it about a year later. We both think it's ridiculous, but the rest of our family is pretty devout. Aunt Naomi never misses the opportunity to let me know that I'm going to Hell, but I figure that's better than spending the rest of eternity with Luke and Michael, so I'll take it.

Michael didn't even bother turning around when I walked in. "Mom won't be home 'til late. She said there are TV dinners in the fridge."

I made a face, not that he saw, and trudged my way into the kitchen. My head was still reeling from everything that had happened today. What were we supposed to do with that kind of information? I rummaged around in the freezer and picked something at random. My mind was with the Winchesters. If I was freaking out this much, I couldn't imagine what was going through their heads. It didn't help that they were all emotionally repressed as fuck, not that I could really criticize.

I shoved my choice of dinner in the microwave and set the timer. I pulled out my phone and shot Dean a text.

**How are you holding up?**

My phone pinged before the microwave did.

**Idk, man. How am I supposed to be holding up? I just found out that my mom's murderer is prob still in town. **

I bit my lip. For all the weird "growing up advice" books Mom was always shoving on me, there was never one called, _What To Do If You Find Out You Might Know The Guy Who Murdered Your Best Friend's Mom_. This was as far from previously charted territory as you could possibly get.

I took a moment before responding,

**I'm so sorry. Any way I can help? **

I pulled my dinner out of the microwave just as Michael sauntered into the room. He had dark hair like mine, but his eyes were the same dark brown as his hair and his features finer. Mom always said I got my bone structure from my dad. Michael got the delicate features of my mom without them making him look too feminine. It was that weirdly delicate balance that made him so popular with the girls. Dean once commented that my dad must have been pretty attractive if I got his face, which was nice of him to say, and he was glad I looked more masculine because Michael's face always made him want to break his nose. I guess I'm glad my face doesn't make Dean want to punch me. I had been kind of struck speechless when he said that about my dad being attractive, because it was almost like he was calling me attractive, and I didn't know what to say. Thankfully, Sam had interrupted about then to say that Dean had some pretty delicate features too and that had quickly devolved into a fight between them that ended when Sam locked himself in the Impala until Dean swore he wouldn't beat him up.

"Where were you all day?" Michael asked. "I got home around the time school got out and you're just now getting in." I knew he didn't really care, he was just being nosy. It wasn't like I usually got home much earlier.

"I was at the library," I answered, shoveling my dinner into a bowl and throwing away the plastic container it had come in. I looked down at it. Chicken, cheese, rice, and mushrooms. It sounded better than nothing. I grabbed a fork and shoveled the first bite into my mouth.

Michael made a face. "You hang out at the library now?" he asked, with a raised eyebrow. "I didn't know you could get lamer."

I rolled my eyes. "You work at a church. I don't think I'm the lame one here."

Michael's condescending smile disappeared and he gave me a cold look. "I happen to like my job."

"Well I happen to like the library. What does it matter to you?"

Michael raised his hands in mock surrender. "God, I was just asking about your day. Remind me not to do that again."

My text tone went off and I pulled out my phone with my free hand. "I'm going to my room," I said distractedly, as I opened the Messages app. This text was from Charlie, not Dean. "See you later."

**Hey, I have a question for you.**

I headed to my room while typing with my right hand.

**Shoot.**

I didn't get a response until I was settled onto my bed and had already taken another two or three bites of my dinner.

**The police report said John Winchester was one of the officers who had a copy of the police records. There's no record of him ever bringing it back. I want to look through his study and get a good look at it. I mean, I didn't exactly have much time to do that at the library. **

That wasn't the text I was expecting to get from her, though I didn't know what else I should have anticipated. Charlie had always been too nosy for her own good and she didn't exactly do boundaries well. That's one of the things she and I always seemed to be arguing about, which was why I was surprised she was asking me for advice.

**That's not a question, but I assume you're asking me if I think it's a good idea?**

She answered almost immediately:

**Pretty much.**

I took a few minutes to think about it. I realized she wasn't asking because she was worried about invading John's personal space. She was worried about Sam and Dean. She didn't want to dredge up anything they didn't need in their lives. What good would it do to bring this up? But maybe they wanted to know.

**Idk. You should ask S & D before you do. She was their mom. They might not want to know anything more about what happened. It might be too hard. Don't bring it up tonight, but maybe tomorrow? They might want to see the file for themselves. **

It took a few minutes for her to respond after that. The longer it took, the more anxious I became. Charlie was a pretty quick texter and only took longer than a minute to respond if she was done with the conversation or was thinking really hard about what to say next.

**Okay. That's prob a good plan. I don't want to hurt them. I'm curious though and I think they are too. Sam's already come in to my room to ask me more about the symbols. I think he's been looking them up online to find the meaning behind them. I really wish I hadn't even looked.**

I sighed and immediately started my response:

**Yeah, but it's not your fault. You couldn't have known you would find anything. Btw, be careful if you do go in John's study. He'll have your head if he finds out you were in there. It'd be safer to look at it at the library, which fyi can see who was on their computer when the IP address hacked the system, so your plan wasn't nearly as foolproof as you thought.**

Charlie's next response came seconds later.

**Ugh. Don't underestimate me. I can hack around that too. I don't have to use my library card to get on the internet there. And John won't know I was in his office. I cover my tracks well. ;)**

I shook my head and set my phone aside, glad that the conversation ended on a lighter note. Everything about the last few hour had started feeling pretty heavy at that point and it was nice to pretend, even for a second that everything was normal. I set my bowl on my nightstand and lay back on my pillow just as my phone let me know I had received another text. I grabbed at it immediately.

Dean had finally responded:

**I'll survive. Thanks, though. I'll see you tomorrow morning.**


	5. Chapter 5

I got a text from Charlie the next morning before I had even managed to roll out of bed.

**I didn't even have to ask. Sam came into my room this morning and asked if I would show him the police report. Dean showed up while he was in the middle of the sentence and said he wanted to see it too. I told them about their dad having the file. They agreed that we should get it out of his study after school.**

**You're invited, obvs.**

School went by like a blur, which was normally a blessing, but felt more like a curse that day. I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but I couldn't deny that my curiosity was piqued as well. I guess I was mostly just worried about how it would affect Sam and Dean.

That's what made me text Charlie again when we were in the Impala after school, headed to their house. No one had audibly referred to anything about the police files all day, but it was clearly on all of our minds. Dean didn't even ask if I wanted to come over, he just started heading that way. I'm sure Charlie told him that she had already texted me, though.

Anyway, it was worrying about what the two of them would see that prompted me to text Charlie. I pulled out my phone while we were still in the parking lot.

**Hey, there's a pic of their mom in the case files isn't there? They usually put those kinds of things in police reports, showing the victim where they were murdered.**

"Who are you texting?" Dean asked, as he made a right at a stoplight.

"Michael," I answered with the first name that popped into my head. I cursed internally. I should have said Loki. What a dumb lie.

Dean raised both his eyebrows at me before turning to look back at the road.

"He was on my ass yesterday about coming home late, so I figured I'd save him the trouble of guessing and let him know I'd be hanging out with you guys again today."

Charlie's phone dinged as she got my text and I saw Sam lean over to try to read it. She shoved him and turned so her back was against the door and started tapping away.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be thrilled about that," Dean answered, rolling his eyes.

Dean and Michael hadn't gotten along since mine and Dean's Freshman year, when Michael was a Junior and captain of the football team. He had seen Dean fight and was convinced he would be a perfect addition to the team. He did everything in his power to convince him to join, but Dean wasn't having it. "I'm not much of a team player," he had told Michael, by way of excuse. And I was glad of it. I didn't want to lose my friend to those dicks as soon as we started to actually be friends. Because of that, Michael hated him, as did the rest of the football team.

Luke took over as team captain when Michael left and kept the flame alive. There wasn't much that Luke and Michael agreed about, but they agreed about hating Dean, so nothing changed when he became their new leader, at least not in that regard.

My phone pinged and I pretended to be irritated by the response so that Dean wouldn't be suspicious.

**Yeah, unfortunately. : / I had nightmares about it all last night. I assume you're gonna tell me not to let them see it? **

I typed back my response quickly.

**Exactly. If it gave you nightmares, imagine how they'll feel. Just leave it out of the file when you bring it out, ok? They shouldn't have to see their mom like that.**

I could see Charlie in the mirror pretending to continue checking her phone so that no one would notice that she was picking up her phone every tim I put mine down. Thankfully, hers was still on silent from being in class.

Mine pinged one last time.

**Got it.**

We made it back to the house less than five minutes after that. Dean had checked and their dad wasn't due back from the precinct until eight, so that gave us plenty of time. We all headed to the study wordlessly. Dean and Sam hung back in the doorway like they thought their dad would be able to sense that the two of them had been in the room. That left Charlie and I to search. I went for his desk, but Charlie figured it would be somewhere else, someplace where he kept the important stuff, though she told me to keep checking the desk anyway. There were plenty of case files in the drawers, but none of them relevant to what we were looking for.

After fifteen minutes, I gave up on the desk and was about to suggest we just go to the library and hack into the Lawrence Police Department website again, when Charlie found a lock box that was attached to the underside of a shelf, painted the same color and barely visible unless you were right up on it. She slid it out from beneath the shelf and tried to open it.

"Anyone know where we can find a key that'll open this?"

Dean moved forward, a bit hesitantly and took the box from her. He set it on the desk then knelt down, pulling out his lock pick. It was a matter of seconds before he opened it. Then he stepped back, like prolonged exposure to the room made it even more likely to get caught.

Charlie pulled out what appeared to be two thick folders. She opened the top and rummaged through them. Then sucked in a breath. "Yeah, this is them." I held my breath. How was she supposed to pull out the photo if everyone was looking at her.

"Maybe we should go to my room," Dean suggested. Sam agreed and headed that way. Dean waited, jerking his head for Charlie to go ahead of him.

Charlie closed the folder and handed them both to Dean before stepping out the door. I followed her and heard Dean's footsteps behind me. I noticed Charlie was holding her shirt strangely, like she was pulling it down. Dean moved past us and the second he did, she let go of her shirt, pulling out a picture from under the hem. She was holding it between her index and middle fingers. She held her arm so her wrist was still touching her back, but twisted her hand so the photograph was extended toward me. I took it quickly, though I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it now.

I had to think fast. "I'll be right there. I'm gonna go to the bathroom really quick."

Dean turned back to look at me and lifted his chin, acknowledging that he heard me. I turned around and all but ran downstairs. Instead of going to the bathroom, I shoved the picture in between the pages of my history book without even glancing at it. I would figure out what to do with the picture later, or at least figure out how to get it back in the folders before someone noticed.

I flushed the toilet in the downstairs bathroom for good measure, then ran back up the stairs.

They had waited for me to get back before they opened the folders. I sat down between Dean and Charlie in our little circle around the files before Dean took a deep breath and opened it up.

I'm still not sure how long we sat there, going through that file. It felt like hours, though I guess it couldn't have been more than thirty minutes. Still, we were silent for a long time, all of us leaning in close to read what we could. Dean waited to make sure everyone had read the first page before turning to the next and so on.

Here's what we found out from it.

John Winchester left the house at one in the afternoon with Sam and Dean to take them to the park, like he did every Saturday. Ellen was there with Jo (this was a year after her husband had died in a hunting accident; a good five years before she fell in love with Bobby). At 2:43, John got a call on his cell phone. When he answered, he almost hung up because he couldn't hear anyone and assumed that Mary had butt dialed him. Then he heard her voice, which sounded far away (the phone was later discovered in her back pocket, so they figured she had dialed him and left it in her pocket so John could hear she needed him without her assailant knowing he was being overheard).

"Why the hell are you in my house? Didn't your mother ever teach you how to knock?"

John had described her voice as being "angry, but not scared, and a little surprised. Like, she thought it was going to be an intruder and she realized she was wrong."

He said he could hear a male voice but it was far away and too muffled for him to recognize it.

"You're insane. I'm calling the police," was the next thing Mary said and then he heard her grunt loudly before a loud thud. There was bruising on her face that was consistent with her having been hit around a few times.

"I kept yelling at her through the phone," John's testimony read. "I ran to my car and pealed out of there. I just kept hoping I could get to her in time."

He was still pulling out of the parking lot when he heard her again. "No, please! Don't do this! You know me. We grew up together, we've lived in this same town since we were in diapers. Don't do this."

"I heard her scream then. Scream louder than I've ever heard her scream. It was all pain, all terror. I- I can't- give me a minute," John's testimony read. There was a note from whoever had transcribed the ordeal that said John broke into tears and it was another ten minutes before he could continue.

"After that, I could only hear him. I guess he had killed her then. I listened to my wife die and I couldn't do anything about it. By the time I got there, whoever had done it was gone. I ran into the kitchen and there she was, with all those goddamn symbols around her. That's when I called you."

There was a coroner's report and notes from the autopsy with pictures of the symbols after the body had been taken and notes about her stomach having been ripped open. No one seemed to know anything about the symbols other than the fact that they were cult-like. There were two close-up pictures of Mary's wrists, one symbol was carved into her right wrist, the other on her left and she lay in the center of the pentacle, which was made from her blood.

There was a note in the end that said there was another case that had similarities to this one. File 79.28.06. I tilted my head to look at the tab on the second folder. "That's this one," I said, laying a finger on it.

Charlie picked it up and opened it. Her face went pale in a matter of seconds and she actually dropped the file back onto the floor like it had burned her. When we looked down we all saw why. The case file was the one detailing the death of her parents.


End file.
